The Argolis Peninsula, southern Greece, is believed to form part of a Pelagonian microcontinent located between two oceanic basins, the Pindos to the west and theVardar to the east, in Triassic to Tertiary time. In eastern Argolis, two important units are exposed: (i) the Ermioni Limestones cropping out in the southwest; (ii) the Poros Formation, observed on an offshore island in the northeast, and on the adjacent mainland. Both these units comprise late Cretaceous (Aptian-Maastrichtian) pelagic limestones, calciturbidites, lenticular matrix- and clast-supported limestone conglomerates and slump sheets. However, the Poros Formation is distinguished from the Ermioni Limestones by the presence of bituminous micritic limestones and an increasing proportion of shale up sequence. These successions are deep-water slope carbonates that once formed the southeast-facing passive margin of the Pelagonian platform (Akros Limestone). Beyond this lay a late Cretaceous ocean basin in the Vardar Zone. This ocean was consumed in an easterly-dipping subduction zone in latest Cretaceous (?) to early Tertiary time, giving rise to an accretionary complex (Ermioni Complex). During early Tertiary (Palaeocene-Eocene) time the passive continental margin (Pelagonian Zone) collided with the trench and accretionary complex to the east. As the suture tightened, former lower-slope carbonates (Ermioni Limestones) were accreted to the base of the over-riding thrust sheets and emplaced onto the platform. Farther west, bituminous upper slope carbonates (Poros Formation) flexurally subsided and passed transitionally upwards into calcareous flysch and olistostromes in a foreland basin. These sediments were then overridden by the emplacing thrust stack and themselves underplated. Late-stage high-angle faulting then disrupted the tectonostratigraphy, in places juxtaposing relatively high and low structural levels of the complex.

Perim Island is an eroded fragment of the southwest flank of a late Miocene (10.5 ± 1.0 Ma) volcano whose centre lay on the southwesternmost tip of Arabia. The volcano is the westernmost of the E–W line of six central vent volcanoes (the Aden Line) that extends 200 km along the south coast of Arabia from Perim to Aden. Major oxide and trace element abundances are given for 35 Perim specimens and these show that the volcano has within-plate trace element characteristics and consists of a petrographically and geochemically simple suite of alumina-poor olivine basalts, andesites, and transitional andesite–trachyandesites. Six specimens, however, are markedly enriched in Al2O3 and CaO, and contain abundant (20–30 mode %) highly calcic (An77–83) plagioclase phenocrysts. Geochemical modelling suggests that the main Perim volcanic sequence was produced by the fractional crystallization (o1 + cpx + Ti-mt + plag) of a silica saturated (SiO2 c. 45%) basic melt. The high A1, high Ca, magmas appear to be mixing products of plagioclase-enriched basic magmas with more evolved melts. Perim is the oldest volcano of the Aden line, which becomes increasingly younger and alkalic eastward. It is suggested that the volcanism is related to an eastwards-propagating rift produced before the most recent stage of sea-floor spreading in the Gulf of Aden (4.5 Ma–present).

The fossiliferous section at Meishucun of Yunnan, China, is a candidate stratotype section for the Precambrian–Cambrian boundary. Early diagenetic dolomites and phosphorites have been sampled across the boundary interval here, and in the correlated section at Maidiping in Sichuanand Valiabad in Iran, for comparison of their carbon and oxygen isotopes. This is the first such study that is calibrated by biostratigraphy in the interval from the earliest (pre-Tommotian) skeletal fossils to trilobites. Although negative oxygen isotopes indicate a diagenetic signal in the Zhongyicun Member and basal Badaowan Member phosphorites, two carbon-isotope cycles are clearly present and can be correlated in dolomitic rocks between the two sections. The first appearance datum (FAD) of the earliest skeletal assemblage (zone I, Marker A), FAD of diverse micromolluscs (zone II, Marker B) and FAD of Chinese trilobites (zones IV, V) and Marker C appear at similar points on the carbon-isotope curve in the two Chinese sections. Integrated carbon-isotope and early skeletal fossil biostratigraphy is shown to have the potential to correlate further afield, with sections in Iran, as well as with India, Siberia, Morocco and Australia. We suggest that a distinctive positive excursion provides a global marker for the interval between Marker B and C in China and just below the Tommotian Stage of Siberia.

Lithostratigraphic terminology is revised for rocks of Ordovician age in the eastern Taurus. The Seydişehir Formation, of late middle Cambrian to early Ordovician age, is shown to be applicable in the eastern and western Taurus as well as in south-eastern Turkey. Near Degˇirmentaş, northeast of Adana, the Seydişehir Formation is overlain, with inferred unconformity, by clastic strata of Ashgill age referred to the Şort Tepe Formation, first defined south of Hakkâri, in the Border Folds of southeastern Turkey. Palaeontological evidence is cited for the early Silurian (Llandovery) age of the unconformably overlying Halityayla Formation farther south, on the coast near Ovacik, where the Şort Tepe Formation is as yet unrecorded. A general model is proposed showing relationships of Cambrian and Ordovician rocks and faunas in southern and southeastern Turkey.

An inverse elastic flexural model with compressive thrusting is applied to the northern Green River Basin, Wyoming. A combination of six parameters in the model determines the deformational processes of basement due to sediment load and compressive thrusting: flexural rigidity, lateral stress, bending moment, initial load, dip angle of the basement, and length. The results suggest that the northern Green River Basin develops dominantly as an elastic flexural response to the deformation of basement due to compressive thrusting of the Wind River Mountains. From the unloaded basement configuration we estimate that by latest Cretaceous time the thrust fault activity of the Wind River Mountains led the basement to uplift about 7 km above the hinge point at the margin of the basin and to form a complex faulted mountain system. The maximum uplift rate is about 100 m/Ma at the Wind River Mountains. Also we predict the sedimentary pattern, and provenance of sediments of Tertiary units, from the unloaded basement geometry. Thus the inverse elastic flexural model can be used to assess the evolutionary processes involved in a basin under compressive thrusting.